"I hope you won't go," Lady Brent was saying. "After all, your tutorship of Harry was only part of your life here. You have been one of our little family for over ten years. I should feel Harry's going more if you went, too; and so, of course, would Charlotte."
Wilbraham stirred uneasily. "It is very kind of you to put it like that," he said. But her words had not removed the frown from his face, and he did not say that he would stay.
There was silence for a time. Then Wilbraham said, suddenly: "Do you remember that evening at dinner when Harry asked about hurrying up his training, and you told him that enlistment wouldn't be the course for him to follow, whatever it might be for others?"
"Because afterwards, when we were alone together, he came back to it."
"Ah!" she said. "Why didn't you tell me?"
He gave a short laugh. "I thought you'd ask that," he said. "I wish I had, sometimes, though I doubt if it would have made any difference."
"He began by saying that he was going to ask me to do something for him. I could do it or not, as I thought right, but I wasn't to tell you about it in either case."
She was silent, and her needles clicked steadily. But there had been the slightest pause in the regular sound of them.
"It was only to save you and his mother anxiety," Wilbraham hurried to say. "I had to give the promise, or he wouldn't have told me what was in his mind. It was to find out for him whether it was possible to get his commission sooner by enlisting. Well, I said at once that I couldn't do that behind your back, and I told him that it was impossible in any case for him to enlist before he was eighteen. He seemed to be satisfied. In fact, he said that he had only wanted to be quite sure that he was leaving nothing undone that he could do. I thought it was off his mind. He never said anything more to me about it."
"Well, I think you acted rightly," she said, after a pause. "I had thought it all out. It had seemed to me possible that he might come to think it was his duty to enlist, as the war went on. I had asked myself whether it would be right to keep him back, if that happened, and had come to the conclusion that there was nothing to be gained by his enlisting--from his point of view, I mean. It seemed to me as I said then, on the first opportunity for saying anything, that--well, you heard what I said. I thought he had accepted it."